Monday, 11 August 2014

Most people don't reckon it, but commercial air travel occurs at a sub-supersonic speed. Say between .84 to .92 mach, for a 747. All the speed of supersonic, with none of the BOOM. And commercially feasible fuel economy.

So in the 1950s and 1960s, why did Air France and British Airways develop a plane that would travel between Mach 1.0 and Mach 2, flying at supersonic speeds around the world? Lawrence Azerrad visits this question on Buzzfeed with his essay Flight of the Concordes.

I've harvested a few YouTube videos about this once-advanced, now-scrapped, visionary airframe and rotary compressor program that achieved Mach 2 without superfans or afterburners...

At the age of eleven I watched man walk on the Moon in real time in low resolution television. Airframe programs such as Concorde promised unlimited travel potentional here on earth.

Now it's all gone.

And why? Why was the Concorde restricted to subsonic speeds over the United States?

Wednesday, 6 August 2014

Kate and Anna McGarrigle's The Log Drivers Waltz exists at the intersection of so many contemporary modes of artistic and feminist expression that it demands admiration.

Its core promise of light-footed frolicing- The log drivers waltz pleases girls completely - is a subtle allusion of erotica.

Yet it is also recursively nostalgic as it combines classic Canuck film animation with the antique logging practices of yore set against the vocal stylings of Canada's great folk sirens - the McGarrigle sisters.

The original NFB / ONF animation

And finally, a wonderful punk interpretation from Babies & Dogs, Fire, Guns, and Power Tools - Just not together

To please both my parents I've had to give way,
And dance with the doctors and the merchants and lawyers;
Their manners are fine but their feet are of clay,
And there's none with the style of a log driver.